Lolo Heimuli: Making champions and good humans

For many years, Lolo Heimuli’s humble family gym in Balmoral, Auckland, produced the best combat fighters in the country — and in the world, too. He has trained world champions and trainers, like Ray Sefo, Mark Hunt and Eugene Bareman (the coach of UFC star Israel Adesanya).

Now he’s focusing on mentoring young people through boxing. And with a new documentary on his life and legacy as one of Aotearoa’s most influential figures in combat sports — Lolo: The Champion Maker, which premiered this week — he talked to Dale about what it takes to make champions.

 

Lolo, it’s a privilege to have a kōrero with you today. I know you as Lolo Heimuli, but there are probably a lot of other names that you carry. I wonder if you’d be kind enough to tell us about your villages as well.

My full name is Asashio Lolofakangalo Heimuli. Asashio was a famous sumo wrestler in Japan in the 1950s. His Royal Highness Tupou the Fourth was in Japan and saw this sumo champion, and he came back and decided to name me after him. My dad was in the military, and he was the right-hand man to the king.

But the family called me Lolo because it’s a more traditional family name.

And your village?

Mate, I come from all over the place. I grew up in Fasi-moe-afi, Nuku’alofa. My mother is from Kolomotu‘a, Kolovai, and different parts of Tonga. And my dad’s from Lapaha and an island called Niuafo‘ou.

How did you come to be in New Zealand? What was the story there?

My mum married Kilifi Heimuli, my stepdad, and they came to New Zealand. I grew up with my grandparents and aunties back in Tonga. I came to New Zealand to meet the rest of my family in 1974, when I was 14. They were staying on Shelly Beach Road in Herne Bay at the time, paying something like $10 a week in rent. And now that’s one of the most expensive areas in Auckland.

So, you arrived here in the big smoke in the heart of the Pacific community.

Yeah. Back in the day, Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, and Herne Bay was an island place where all the Pacific Islanders lived. Nowadays, it’s different — they moved south.

Did you experience pushback sometimes? These were testy times for Pasifika people, and sometimes Pākehā were racist towards you. Sometimes Māori were the same. Did you feel as though anyone was leaning on you?

Not really, Dale. I can’t remember any bullies or anything like that when I arrived here. I went to intermediate school in Ponsonby, and I didn’t really have any issue with discrimination. Mind you, I was probably bigger than anyone else, so nobody wanted to bully me.

Nobody bullies Lolo Heimuli, mate! So you’re at school. Were you already showing an interest in combat sports? I mean, did you grow up with gloves on, Lolo?

Yes. My biological dad was a school champion in amateur boxing in Wellington. He went to St Pat’s in Silverstream. It’s a Catholic school. Back in the day, boxing was one of their sports options. He tried to coach me when I was about seven or eight years old.

Both my mum and my dad come from fighting families. My grandad on my mother’s side was a boxing coach in Tonga, and he had one of the biggest stables there. So it was natural for us to put on the gloves and spar.

How did you get interested in martial arts and combat sports?

My uncle was the one who got me interested. He was the one who took me to kung fu movies, and the biggest kung fu star back then was Bruce Lee. If you’re not a Bruce Lee fan, you’re not normal! Everyone wanted to be Bruce Lee.

Do you still use your reo? You speak Tongan fluently and maintained that?

I’m still trying to speak in English, mate! We speak Tongan at home with our kids. I’ll tell you a story about that. When we had our first child, my wife went back to work and I chose to stay at home. I wanted to do that.

So, our first one, Lolo Junior, didn’t go to any preschool or anything like that. In his first or second week at primary school, the teacher called me and said: “Hey, do you want to come in? I want to see you.”

I went in there and he said: “I think you need to take Lolo to see an ear specialist.”

I said: “Why is that?”

“Because sometimes I talk to him and he just looks at me and doesn’t say anything.”

“That’s because he can’t speak in English,” I said. “We’re speaking Tongan at home.”

But two weeks later, he was speaking English like everyone else. English is very easy to pick up for kids.

He’s just had his first fight not long ago, your boy. How did you feel as a father? Because, you know, in the ring, it only takes one punch. That’s why it’s a popular sport, because of the risks involved. As a father, were you anxious to see your boy in there?

One hundred percent, mate. I’m a nervous wreck, and this is something that I’ve been doing for the last 40 years. Somebody gets knocked out or breaks a leg or whatever it is, I’ve done it so many times that I don’t even lose a beat.

But if my kids were sick in the night, my wife would be relaxed and I’d be the one putting them in the car at 3am and rushing them to Starship. So you can imagine what it’s like when my son chose to fight. I don’t really want him to fight, but that’s what he wants to do.

I’ve lost two friends in the ring, but this is what he wants to do. This is what’s going to make him happy. So, I’m only supporting him and giving him the best guidance I can, and I encourage him to train harder.

The reality of what’s involved in combat sport and in the ring is rammed home by what you’ve just said, having lost two friends in the ring. I mean, by the grace of God, we go forward, but sometimes it doesn’t work out. How did that affect you when you lost your friends fighting?

If anything, it made me push our guys even harder. Because the better they prepare, the less chance of injury or even death. But it’s what they choose.

We want them to be champions, but more importantly, we want them to be good human beings. I make no secret. I’m honest with them: “Not all of you guys are gonna be champions, but if you do it seriously, one of you will be.”

But, you know, if you’re a fighter, you can last up to 15 years if you’re lucky. But the other 20 or 40 years, you’re going to be a family man, so that’s where our focus is with our programme with the whānau these days.

It’s about discipline, isn’t it? The whole fight game is about commitment to training, attention to nutrition, attitudes towards opponents, respect for the sport. A lot of people just see it as men and women fighting. But there’s so much more to it. Let’s talk about what makes a successful athlete.

Everything you just said is bang on the money — the discipline and the hard training. We’re hoping those things will become their character outside the ring.

With kickboxing, they have to watch their weight, they have to watch their diet. They can’t go out. They have to stay at home and show up to training. I’m super hard on the fighters. If you ask any of our fighters what’s going to happen if they turn up one minute late to training, I make them do push-ups and sit-ups — you know, hundreds.

With people who show up just to train and have fun, I don’t put that sort of pressure on them. They can be late to training if they want to. But for fighters, where people are going to get hit, it’s not about winning. The last thing I want is to ring up a parent and have to say: “Come with me to the hospital. We’re gonna see your son.” That’s what scares me the most.

As a coach, what different challenges are there when it’s just one person rather than a team? What are the characteristics that separate those who are drawn to team sports from those who are drawn to individual sports?

In rugby, if you get tired, you can sort of slow down or have a breather while the other 14 players are playing. But in boxing and kickboxing, you can’t do that. As soon as you stop, the other guy will own you. That’s the most simple way I can put it.

You have had an amazing personal career. How many fights did you have, and what might you consider to be a couple of the highlights of your own journey as a fighter?

I don’t keep a record, but I’ve had over 20 fights, and that’s not a lot. One guy, I fought him four times. There weren’t that many fighters back in the day.

There was a guy called Carl Sargent who used to run kickboxing on Sundays at K’ Road and at Manurewa, and we used to rock up and put our name down and hop in there and fight. It wasn’t that organised, like today when they have all these fancy lights and everything. It was nothing like that.

I’ve noticed over the years the respect that fighters have for each other. I’ve seen embraces with guys who’ve just been hammering away at each other. And it’s perhaps something that most of us don’t understand clearly. This is the respect for your opponent, friendships that have been forged, even though you’ve been hammering at each other in the ring. What would you say about that respect, and how much of an aspect it is to the fight game?

Some of my best friends are men I’ve fought, but I think that respect is mostly coming from the Asian traditions. When you see a Thai fighter walking around the ring and putting his hand on the rope while they play Thai music, he’s actually blessing the ring and warding off evil spirits, and he is praying not just for himself, but his opponent as well. But when the bell goes, they try to beat the hell out of each other. And then they go back to being friends again after.

One of my best friends is a guy who came from Thailand to fight me, and after that, we became friends. He doesn’t have any family here, so we invite him over every Christmas, and he spends time with us. But nobody would know that he came from Thailand to smash me. He’s like family to me. And there are a lot of similar stories with everyone who fought back in the day. It’s just the nature of the sport.

You’ve developed a fantastic reputation as a thinking coach, an experienced coach, a supporter of athletes and of rangatahi. What do you think makes a good coach?

I’ve been asked that question a lot of times and I don’t really have a clear answer. But if you genuinely care for your fighters and you go out of your way for them, even if they get sick or something like that, I think that’s what being a good coach means to me.

And, sometimes it can be tough love, with punishment if they come late, but you’re doing it for their safety. That’s my strategy.

There’s the physical side of preparation, Lolo, but also the mental side of preparing for a fight and honing those mental agility skills. I was listening to Ardie Savea after the test the other day, and he said: “I’ve honed my anticipation skills.” So he anticipates what’s going to happen. How important have you seen this when working with your fighters, that they know how to anticipate their opponent’s next move?

I remember when I was working with Shane Cameron, when he fought Bob Mirovic. He broke his hand in the first round, but he kept going. And he knocked the guy out in the eighth round, fighting with one hand.

I was privileged that I ended up working with a lot of those athletes, and I believe that the mental side of the fight game is probably 90 per cent. You gotta have that self-belief, even if things don’t go your way.

I was working with Mark Hunt when he fought Antonio Bigfoot Silva. Mark broke his hand in the second round. He fought on, and then he dropped Silva, and it was right at the end. I knew I couldn’t tell him anything technical, so the only thing I said to him was: “Mark, you have three things you need to win this fight. Number 1, heart. Number 2, heart. Number 3, heart.” And it went viral.

Mark fought him to the end with a broken hand, and many people regard that fight as the best UFC heavyweight fight ever. This was in 2013 in Brisbane.

What do you think it is about the fight game, Lolo? The biggest events in the world, when we look at boxing, and now UFC, the global impact of these challenges has people on the edge of their seats. Some might say it harks back to the gladiatorial days and the bloodlust that humans have to see this aggressive side of ourselves. What do you put it down to?

You said it yourself, and that’s true. I think people want to see fighters get hit or get knocked out. This is why heavyweight fighting appeals to most people, because heavyweights knock people out. It’s almost guaranteed, you know? Somebody’s going to get knocked out.

It’s just our nature, going back to the Colosseum days and people filling the stadium because they know somebody’s gonna get hit or get killed.

Nowadays, you’ve got a referee. Back in the day, they fought until someone died. Nothing much has changed. In a lot of my training, I emphasise defence to make sure that our guys don’t get hit, but from time to time somebody gets knocked out. But we have a very low ratio of people getting knocked out.

We’re a bloody awful species, human beings, aren’t we? But we’re all part of it. I know you’ve had great highlights over the years as a coach, and you’ve worked with the best, you’re so highly regarded, Lolo. Is there a moment when it all came together for you, when you thought: “This is why I do what I do”?

When parents come and tell me that the kids behave a lot better, or they get the school report that says they’ve had a big improvement. Or when kids who come to the gym with zero or minus-zero confidence come out confident. I won many awards over the years, but I think some of those comments and praise from the families outdo any of the biggest awards I got.

One of the best ones I had was only last year, from the police, for helping some of the troubled kids. To me those little awards mean more than the awards I got for Hall of Fame and stuff like that. It gives me a nice warm feeling when you make a difference for some of those young guys.

Who would have thought, when you arrived in 1974, that they’d end up making a documentary about your contribution? How did you feel when someone came to you and said: “We want to make a documentary about you”?

I still pinch myself. I used to laugh that one of my biggest walking advertisements is Israel Adesanya. He gave me a credit a couple of times when he was interviewed after big fights and stuff. So, I thank the Stylebender for that.

Well, I mean, coming out of this little place called Auckland, New Zealand, and taking on the world. And you coached 100 national champions and 10 world champions in combat sports! It’s a pretty remarkable story, isn’t it?

Yeah, people would say: “What!? From New Zealand, a world champion? You’ve gotta be kidding!” But then after Ray Sefo won the world title, we had other guys coming up — Jason Suttie, Mark Hunt, Shane “Choppa” Chapman. And then we had a long chain of world champions coming out of New Zealand.

And even today, look at what City Kickboxing are doing with the UFC fighters on the big stage. We definitely have the talent. I mean, we take rugby for granted, but look at our population. Five million. And how many are in Australia? Twenty-five million or something. But we always do better against them and against South Africa. So we do have the natural physical talent here. We just don’t know how good we are.

For a humble man who prefers to stay in the background, promoting the people you work with, to have your life portrayed on the big screen must be quite a turnaround.

I’m very humbled, but I still feel the same, to be honest. But you’re right, everybody’s excited, my family’s excited. I just feel so blessed and lucky, that’s all.

And hopefully some of the story can help inspire other young coaches or other young family men or anybody. I hope the documentary can help people that come from humble beginnings like I did.

Do you do anything else? We know you as Lolo the kickboxing champion, but you know, you might have an interest in playing chess or fishing or something else. What do you do to keep yourself fresh that’s out of the ring and out of all of that sort of thing?

Mate, kickboxing was just a fluke. It might come as a bit of a surprise for you, but I wanted to be a musician, and then I wanted to be like Bryan Williams, you know, playing rugby. I wasn’t that good at it.

And then I had my first fight, and I was hooked with that — and now here I am still trying to teach the young guys.

But yeah, I like to go fishing, though I’m not a very good fisherman. But I have a lot of young guys who go fishing, and they say: “Hey, coach, I’ve got some fish, you want some?” Of course, I’m always gonna say yes.

Are you a pianist, a guitarist, a drummer?

I try to play guitar.

What sort of guitar have you got at home that you like to strum on?

I can’t afford the expensive one, but I got given a Fender Telecaster by my friend, and I went and bought me an Epiphone Les Paul, which is suitable for me to play a little bit of jazz and a bit of blues.

You’re a champion, Lolo. Thanks for all the mahi you’ve done over the years and will do in the years ahead, and congratulations on a wonderful life.

 

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Lolo: The Champion Maker can be seen on Sky Sport Now and Neon.

E-Tangata, 2025